Guardian publishes essay on Oslo by one-stater who blames Jews for antisemitism

It doesn’t take too much insight into the far-left political climate to conclude that if current talks between Israel and the Palestinians fail, there is little doubt that – regardless of the actual factors involved – the Israelis will be blamed for the outcome by Guardian commentators. Additionally, despite the fact that Mahmoud Abbas finally agreed to engage in talks without any preconditions regarding settlements, such Israeli building across the green line concurrent with the current talks will be singled out with particular opprobrium in their political post-mortems.

The 20 year history of Oslo, Shlaim claims in his CiF essay, has vindicated Edward Said’s characterization of the agreement“an instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles”, and predicts that “as long as Netanyahu remains in power, it is a safe bet that no breakthrough will be achieved in the new round of talks.”

Shlaim, it should be noted, perfectly represents the Guardian’s institutional hostility to Zionism, as the Oxford affiliated new Israeli historian (who’s been roundly criticized for his shoddy research) hascharacterized Zionism as the greatest single threat to Jews, blaming Israeli Jewish behavior for the upsurge of anti-Semitism throughout the world. He has written the following at Electronic Intifada:

It is this brand of cruel Zionism that is the real enemy of what remains of liberal Israel and of the Jews outside Israel. It is the enemy because it fuels the flames of virulent and sometimes violent anti-Semitism. Israel’s policies are the cause; hatred of Israel and anti-Semitism are the consequences.

Shlaim has also explicitly expressed his support for the dissolution of the Jewish state. In an interview with MEMO (theHamas supporting British group) Shlaim was quoted as saying the following:

There is a solution to this conflict – a two-state solution – but Israel has systematically undermined the possibility of a viable Palestinian state. Today we have reached a point where it is barely conceivable, given the magnitude of the presence of the Israeli state on the West Bank. I have shifted therefore to supporting a one-state solution with equal rights for all the state’s citizens.

He has also, on the pages of Comment is Free, in 2009, demonized Israel as a “rogue state” which practices terrorism:

This brief review of Israel’s record over the past four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with “an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders”. A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practices terrorism – the use of violence against civilians for political purposes.

Shlaim concludes his latest ‘CiF’ essay by claiming that “Oslo faltered and eventually broke down [sic] because Likud-led governments negotiated in bad faith.”

‘Bad faith’ is also an accurate characterization of a CiF contributor who has assaulted Israel’s very moral legitimacy, blamed Jews themselves for the resurgence of Jew hatred, and though claiming to be concerned about the peace process, failed to reveal to his readers that he opposes the existence of a Jewish state within any borders.

Of course, the decision by CiF editors to publish Shlaim is par for the course for an institution with a history of providing disproportionate space in their paper to those whoopenly oppose the peace process and seek, by the gradual erosion of its legitimacy or even by violence, the Jewish state’s demise.

Avi Shlaim has a platform and much influence. He could be using that platform and influence to try and bring progress and light to the situation.

Instead, he’s just contributing negativity and blame.

Clearly the conflict has always been and will always be complex. For either side to claim to be blameless is silly.

While Bibi is no Rabin (and neither would he claim to be) the way he is often portrayed is ridiculous.

Here are some facts that are rarely discussed:

In September 1996, during his first term as Prime Minister, he met Yasser Arafat at the Erez checkpoint in Gaza to begin peace negotiations.

He later negotiated with Arafat in Washington, shaking hands on the White House lawn as Yitzhak Rabin had done.

In January 1997, he handed most of Hebron to the Palestinians.

In October 1998, he and Arafat signed the Wye River peace memorandum.

When Israel voluntarily and unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Netanyahu correctly warned it would lead to increased aggression from Hamas.

As Prime Minister again in 2009 he made clear he is ready to negotiate with any Arab leader and that he endorses a Palestinian state alongside Israel. (Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad described the speech as “bad news”.)

In the same month he removed many West Bank checkpoints, directly leading to a dramatic upturn in the Palestinian economy.

In September 2009 he met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House, the first of several negotiations with the Palestinians.

” – the Israelis will be blamed for the outcome by Guardian commentators. ”

I think you are a little out of date. Last weekend the Guardian had 6 ( from memory ) articles that were pro US/UK /ISR stance on Syria and at least 2 editorials. There was a truly odd article from Nick Cohen in which he tried to “out Jew” Milliband and calling him a coward basically. It was low brow and bizarre .

You have many friends in the Guardian believe me, but maybe you just ignore them as we all do with friends that go over the score occasionally.

Yes jasper we have – especially its editor who was involved in some delicate blood libel, Harriett Sherwood its Israeli correspondent who isn’t even trying to report anything positive and her ignorant bullshit (badly) masquerading as objective reporting is full of malevolent lies, distortions against Israel, its contributors like Deborah “chosen people” Orr with her openly antisemitic tropes, some of its favorite pet posters like you (using the alias Berchmans) who never could resist to some Jew-baiting and some threats with violence.

He should indeed be the Guardian editor and return to that newspaper the rational left who are sickened by the filth that Rustbridger propagates. Also, the umbilical cord connecting The Guardian to the BEEP must be cut.

This quote from your headline grossly misrepresents Shlaim’s position. By the middle of your piece ‘blam[ing] Jews’ becomes the rather contorted phrase ‘blaming Israeli Jewish behavior’. Refer to Shlaim’s article and you’ll find a very clear statement:
“Israel’s policies are the cause; hatred of Israel and anti-Semitism are the consequences.”
So he’s not blaming Jews or Israeli Jewish behavior, but Israeli government policy – a very different thing.

“The 20 year history of Oslo, Shlaim claims in his CiF essay, has vindicated Edward Said’s characterization of the agreement”

Shlaim introduces Said’s views precisely because at the time of Oslo he disagreed with them; both contributed essays to the London Review of Books, Shlaim’s positive about it and Said’s negative. Shlaim argues that Said got it right and he got it wrong mainly because Likud governments (and Netanyahu’s in particular) never wanted Oslo to succeed.

pretzel your problem is your extremely poor ability to understand simple English language texts.
Sencar: Israel’s policies are the cause; hatred of Israel and anti-Semitism are the consequences.
Itsik de Wembley: I have to agree with you on this one sencar with one exception

… the utter idiot who accused me of Holocaust denial.
After I proved that your accusation is a bullshit because you don’t have any arguments makes me an idiot. The world according to pretzelberg the stuck record.

Most certainly not.
Anti Semitism will be there whether Israel exists or not.
My understanding of Shlaim is that some of Israel’s actions give fuel to the Anti Semites who turn them into virulent and sometime violent ends.

If you believe that my thinking is that my country’s actions are the cause of Anti Semitism you are mistaken and we have somewhat misunderstood each other.
Anti Semites are the cause of Anti Semitism.
They use some of Israel’s actions by taking it out of context or focusing on tragedies.
I have nothing further to say of this matter.

Fritz, Jews, being cool headed! You’re having a laugh! Especially Israelis. We are very passionate about everything! Especially Justice.
As for Hungarians, I can only say about Hungarian Jews.
My father is Czech and his father’s parents came from Hungary.

And before any “Jaspers” start jumping up waving their arms my Mother’s parents came to Palestine” before Yasser Arafat did.

“…because it (certain Israeli actions and certain Zionist view points) fuels the flames of virulent and sometimes violent anti-Semitism. Israel’s policies are the cause; hatred of Israel and anti-Semitism are the consequences.”

The virulent and occasional violent Anti-Semitism was already there disguised as anti-Zionism.
Certain Israeli actions fuels that irrational hate, which certain speakers who hate Israel, Jews or both take advantage of and use as propaganda of a sort.
The real question that should be posed is what option Israel has.

Some people may think Israel can change its path and appease.
I believe Israel has no option in order to survive as a Jewish entity in any sort but to stand tall against its enemies.
Idiots will be Idiots and antiSemites will be AntiSemites.
We need to carry on and try to explain our goals to those who wish to hear it.
Unlike Avi Shlaim, who reminds me of the Jews of the 18 century who thought that appeasing more will remove the AntiSeimitism, I think those who hate us will not be changed through words, or actions we do, since they give two hoots about us anyway.
It’s those we can talk to that can make the difference.

Well, that was my take on it.
Rush or naive as I was, this was my take.

On a personal level what saddens me most about Mr Shlaim is not his loss of faith in the 2 state solution, but in his choice to write for the electronic intifada.

They obviously only use his words as “in house Jew” rather than try to see where he was once was.
It is my opinion that for Mr Abunimah the Arabs have done no wrong, and the Jews never deserved anything.
He forgot that if it hadn’t been for Zionism he is likely to have been born outside of Palestine, or his chance of survival would have been very low.
Wars between the people in the region would have still gone on with the likely hood of far greater cost.

Israel’s policies are the cause; hatred of Israel and anti-Semitism are the consequences
Yes sencar – antisemitism is first understood and then justified. As we all know anti-semitism is the consequence of Israeli policies – before the existence of Israel it was a totally unknown idea.So he’s not blaming Jews or Israeli Jewish behavior, but Israeli government policy – a very different thing.
Have you ever contemplated the possibility that the Israeli governments are elected by the majority of Israeli electorate? …mainly because Likud governments (and Netanyahu’s in particular) never wanted Oslo to succeed.
Not like Arafat, Hamas, Abbas and any their Jew hating propagandists like Shlaim and you. This group’s frantic efforts to make Oslo work is well known.

“before the existence of Israel it (anti-Semitism) was a totally unknown idea.”

Neither I nor Shlaim are stupid enough to imagine that anti-Semitism started with Israeli persecution of the Palestinians. However there is considerable evidence to show that anti-Semitic incidents increase significantly every time Israel raises the level of its brutality towards the Palestinians and that anti-Semitism in the Arab world generally is far higher since Zionist colonisation than before.The American indians weren’t anti-Christian or anti-white, just resistant to having their land stolen.

“However there is considerable evidence to show that anti-Semitic incidents increase significantly every time Israel raises the level of its brutality towards the Palestinians…”

First of all, let’s return to context here, after all, it’s the lack of context in many of those fueling speeches after each war/ operation / arrest / demonstration that causes such rising tides. And here you are doing just that. Pointing the finger at just one side.
No one sees anti Arab riots after each rise in the Arab on Arab brutal slaughter which been going on since time began.

“… anti-Semitism in the Arab world generally is far higher since Zionist colonisation than before.”

2 things,
1 – The rise of Anti Semitism in the Muslim world (not just Arab) has reached where we are in the early 20th century after the national movements sweeped through it.
It carried on as a beating stick to keep the people in check and divert attention from the failing governments as you know full well.
2 – colonisation is not a term to describe the settlement of Israel under both late Ottoman era and the British Mandate to Palestine.
I believe development is a better term as both Arabs and Jews of the area gained until they waged war in 1948.
Never the less the Israeli Arabs continued to gain from it as well as many Palestinians.
Colonisation would mean the Jews have no roots there or right to be there.

Neither I nor Shlaim are stupid enough to imagine that anti-Semitism started with Israeli persecution of the Palestinians.
Correct sencar you are not stupid you are much worse than that – you are a racist bigot and an antisemite. Only cardcarrying antisemites would say that the growing antisemitism is the fault of the Jews. The Aleppo pogrom and the Farhud happened well before the establishment of Israel and the increase of their hate of the Jews is the consequence of the fact that they are not free to continue this practice.However there is considerable evidence to show that anti-Semitic incidents increase significantly every time Israel raises the level of its brutality towards the Palestinians
But of course sencar when the “Zionists” Israel brutally protect itself proving again and again its moral, social, military and cultural superiority apart from hissing fits they are impotent – exactly as their European supporters.…since Zionist colonisation…
typical neo-Nazi rhetoric sencar.

So, sencar, then it must be the case that anti-Arab feeling and ‘Islamaphobia’ are simply a consequence of the behavior of Arab and and Muslim governments plus the actions of Arab/Muslim non-state actors who commit terrorism against Israelis, Jews and western populations. I look forward to seeing such a dry and dispassionate article expressing this at CiF. Just to reiterate, anti-Arab/Muslim attitudes and possible violent actions against individuals and populations anywhere they may exist – sad yet (wink wink) understandable. Does that work for you?

The problem is that anti Semitism was always irrational hate. Logic and truth play no part in it.
As my twelve year old asked me the other day, she said:
“But dad, the Germans are clever people, how could they not see through Hitler’s nonsense?
Surely they knew he was talking rubbish!”
I had no answer to this.
All I could think about to cheer me up was “Don’t call me Shirley…”

The only reason for antisemitism among Muslims is that Al Qur’an says they are Islam’s most implacable enemies. The prophet of Islam refers to Jews as pigs and monkeys. Is it a surprise then that Muslim countries hate the Jews? Which countries have tried to invade Israel since 1948? Western Christian countries, or ME Muslim countries?
Antisemitism is hard-wired in Islam. That’s the reason. Avi Shlaim’s shtick is just mouthing the Islamic excuse to commit genocide against the Jews.

You are correct that the view inside the religion was giving rise to Anti Semitism for some time just like Christianity used its understanding of Jesus’ fate to raise Anti Semitism through out the years.
Never the less Islam also tends to have some positive aspects about Jews or the people of the book as they are sometimes reffered to.
I still think that Pan Arabism brough about a rise in the hate by recycling the old hate speech giving religious excuses to stir the filth.One thing is certain, AntiSemitism has been about since ancient time and constantly been recycled.
From Europe to the new world it has been around and still is.
Israel play little or no role in the root of it, but one cannot say that Israel’s faults have not been an “Anti Semitic salesman’s” dream.

The Christian West is protecting Israel today. America subsidizes Israel with dollars, but not nearly enough, and the EU is one of Israel’s biggest markets. Name ONE Arab country that subsidizes Israel and opens its markets to Israel.
However, let me take Jasper’s point about the Jews being ‘protected’ under Islam in what is laughingly called ‘The Golden Age’ of Islam. The Jews were dhimmis, forced to pay protection money to stay alive – jizya. This is from Jihad Watch:-

‘…the massacre of more than 6000 Jews in Fez (Morocco) in 1033; of the hundreds of Jews killed between 1010 and 1013 near Cordoba, and other parts of Muslim Spain; of the massacre of the entire Jewish community of roughly 4000 in Granada during the Muslim riots of 1066. Referring to the latter massacre, Robert Wistrich writes: “This was a disaster, as serious as that which overtook the Rhineland Jews thirty years later during the First Crusade, yet it has rarely received much scholarly attention.” Wistrich continues: “In Kairouan [Tunisia] the Jews were persecuted and forced to leave in 1016, returning later only to be expelled again.” [1]

What of the putative “culture of conviviencia,” that is, the Golden Age of Tolerance in Spain before, it is claimed, it was destroyed by the intolerance of the Almohads. Unfortunately, “The Golden Age” also turns out to be a myth, invented, ironically, by the Jews themselves. The myth may well have originated as early as the twelfth century, when Abraham Ibn Daud in his Sefer ha-Qabbalah contrasted an idealised period of tolerance of the salons of Toledo in contrast to the contemporary barbarism of the Berber dynasty. But the myth took a firm grip on the imagination of the Jews in the nineteenth century thanks to the bibliographer Moritz Steinschneider and historian Heinrich Graetz, and perhaps the influence of Benjamin Disraeli’s novel Coningsby, published in 1844. ‘

So, ALL murders of Jews by Muslims is excused and promoted by Islam. Read Al Qur’an. I have!

Your post is a valiant attempt at an answer despite posting such a long rather fanciful quote. The continuing rediscovery of Islamic intolerance of Judaism has almost certainly gathered pace post 67 phenomenon but I agree it was no picnic. Simply way way better than life under the Christians.

I don’t think there are people on this planet who have wasted more time and energy repeating the exact same sense of bullshit and nothingness than a so-called pro-Palestinian message board poster of the Palestinian perspective.

As long as you continue to belittle Israel’s existence while looking the gift horse of Peace in the mouth, then nothing you say or do will ever justify the notion that you deserve anything more than what you’ve gotten.

You’re lucky Zionists aren’t the violent type you claim we all happen to be, Jasshole.

Sturmbannfuehrer Schmidt was better than Obersturmbannfuehrer Globke. He killed personally only slightly more than 1000 Jews and Gypsies, while Globke – this butcher – has more than 2000 victims’ blood on his hands. Scmidt is jasper’s hero today.

You wrote that my post was a ‘long, fanciful quote’. Wrong, it was a fact filled, historically accurate account. You also bizarrely wrote that there was ‘The continuing rediscovery of Islamic intolerance of Judaism ……’
Now, who’s being fanciful! Your prophet murdered over 700 bound Jews and oversaw their execution by beheading. It’s Sunna to murder Jews! Muslims may have tolerated Jews from time to time, but Islam has always had a racist hatred of them. Shame on Islam!

I am always puzzled that the land that Jews lost post 48 is often mentioned. How can they have amassed so much land if they lived surrounded by powerful Jew haters ? Is it possible you are stretching the degree of intolerance to support any particular narrative?

So, no direct response to my post, just a red herring about land post 1948. OK, I can go with that, too.
Israel’s land surface currently covers 1/10th of 1 per cent of the whole of the Middle East. Got that? 1/10th of 1 per cent. She is a tiny country! The Arab countries around her are bigger than Europe, but they’ve no space for their Arab brothers! Pathetic!
And although Israel is a tiny country, the 1,400 year old religious war against the Jews means that the so-called Palestinians want that too. Look at the ‘Palestinian’ maps. Do you see Israel their? No.
Islam wants to steal Israel’s land and massacre the Jews, a la Muhammed.

You wrote: ‘You could have resisted the opportunity to deny these people their identity.’
The ‘Palestinians’ do have an identity. They are Arabs. In fact, they are Arabs of many different kinds. A comment written by a traveler said :
“The Arabs themselves cannot be considered but temporary residents. They pitched their tents in its grazing fields or built their places of refuge in its ruined cities. They created nothing in it. Since they were strangers to the land, they never became its masters. The desert wind that brought them hither could one day carry them away without their leaving behind them any sign of their passage through it”.
Comment concerning the Arabs in Palestine in the 1800s

So, there never has been a Palestinian nation with a unique populace. Never! It’s an invention to make a stick to beat the Jews with. That’s all!

” Palestinian nation ..It’s an invention to make a stick to beat the Jews with. ”

About the most self centred and manufactured excuse for Israeli intransigence as ever I have heard. The Palestinians only exist in terms of anti Semitism? If there are others like you your country is doomed

Azmi Bishara the well known Zionist activist:There is no Palestinian nation they are a colonial invention
An other Zionist stooge Hamas interior minister, Fathi Hamad,Half of Palestinians came from Egypt and the other half came from Saudi Arabia,” just as Newt Gingrich said, Palestinians are an ‘invented’ people.
One of the leader of the PLO Zahir MuhseinThe Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a
Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle
against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality
today there is no difference between Jordanians,
Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and
tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of
a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand
that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian
people’ to oppose Zionism.
For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state
with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa.
While as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa,
Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we
reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even
a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.

jasper you will be seriously punished if you spill your shit without the the agreement of the comrades.

What Jasper doesn’t get is that should israel disapear there will be a massive war inside the near east about control.
Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt will tear that country to pieces.
Likely that Lebanon will get thrown into it.

Jasper,
Ever notice that the Palestinians, from the time of their 1964 charter, right through today dream of “taking back” land that, and only that, is controlled by Jews, i.e., their land claims seem to run concurrent only with jewish claims. They have no problem with the borders of any Arab country created through the same mandate system that created the Jewish National Home west of the Jordan.

I have never heard anybody argue that Nazism in Europe or the Pogroms were a consequence of the creation of Israel. I have heard many argue that Israel was created as a consequence of European pogroms and antisemitism, the holocaust and nazism in Europe.

Thanks Fritz.
This is very known and true.
But one cannot forget that every attack is different.
Causes are likely to be connected in some areas but sometimes are not.
Add to that the foiled attacks where the attackers handed themselves in when they couldn’t follow through out of either fear of death or the realization that whet they do is wrong.

I think there are 2 big areas which the world ignores completely.
1- Some bombers and attackers do so to improve the lives of their families (which are poor as it is) or to remove their familly’s stigma as Israeli collaborators etc.

One must also remember that many Arabs refuse to play a role in such game. Many of the Israeli Arabs do progress in the state in responsible position such as Hospital managers and police officers.

I think that unlike outsiders it is Israelis that can see clearly that this is not a black and white scenario.

In yom kippur war towards the end, next to Suez Israeli forces and Egyptian forces exchanged laughs and developed in a short time very good relationships.

When returning to their home some famillies didn’t understand why some soldiers will think that carrying on fighting until the destruction of the Egyptian 3rd battalion was a bad idea.

I for one, who been living in Israel during early Oslo, think that many of us Israelis have had enough.
We wanted to end it up and I guess to date we are still puzzled why the other side didn’t feel the same.
Perhaps we wanted too much.

“This is not least due to the fact that with the signing (of the Oslo Accords) on 13th September, 1993, that instead of peace, an era of jihad attacks broke out. Just a few days after the ceremony at the White House, on the 4th of October in Washington, the first Palestinian suicide attack injured 29 Israelis. This was the prelude to a hitherto unprecedented wave of terror against the Jewish state, which has resulted in the murders of 1500 people until today, more Israelis have been killed than in the previous decades after the founding of the State. Thus, initiated by the Oslo peace process, this was historically probably the only one (peace process) to take place that led to violence.
…
The American psychiatrist Kenneth Levin aptly described the Israeli attitude in those years as the “Oslo Syndrome” in accordance with the Stockholm Syndrome. According to Levin, the continuing state of siege in Israel since her inception meant that the real threat had been replaced by a detached reality in the imagination of many Israelis. As in 1973, when the bank employees in Stockholm thanked their captors for their good treatment, the connection made by the peace camp of Israel to the Palestinian jihad attacks was that they were an understandable reaction to Israeli behavior. Thus, it appeared that the anti-Semitic hatred and rejection of the Jewish State were no longer the reasons for the conflict, but the blame lay entirely with themselves (the Israelis).”

I think appeasement is the worse crime we commit and by now we should have learned. Chamberlain appeased Hitler and look what we got. We appeased the Black slaves and we have to contend with Black violence in the Americas for centuries. We appeased Africans and Asians and made them independence and look the wars they created. off with appeasement. Tell it how it is.Stop giving in to the inferior races. Maintain our superiority for the sake of humanity.

Avi Schlaim is a well known revisionist historian liar.
He’s also an apologist for Palestinian fascism.

Google the article Sharon has opened the gates of hell
Avi Shlaim
March 29, 2004.

Shlaim said Israel’s assassination of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, marked an extraordinarily dangerous escalation in the conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine.

My comments.
Schlaim thinks Jews live in some Roman colonialist name called Palestine.
The name Palestine is named after the Philistines, not the Palestinians or any Arab group.
The name Palestine was applied by the Romans, as a chagrin against Israel.

Schlaim was a supporter of this mass murderer Yassin.
Terrorism went down 90% after Yassin was killed.
Hundreds of Jews who had there limbs torn off by homicide bombers sent by Yassin.
The PR shots of Yassin in his wheelchair will be remembered by those that don’t see the crippled Jewish bodies of all those that he ordered to be bombed by Hamas.
Yassin was a mass murderer of the same ilk as Saddam Hussein.
Saddam never killed a Kurd he just inspired others to do his dirty work.

Once again, Palestinian Arab support for terrorism is the highest in the world
September 11, 2013

Pew Research just released their latest Global Attitudes report on how the Muslim world views extremist groups and terrorism.

Once again, Palestinian Arab Muslims are found to support terrorism and have a higher regard for terrorist than any other group. By far.

Pal Arabs show more than twice the support compared to any other Sunni population surveyed!

Here is how they compare to other groups over the past 11 years:

Similarly, Palestinian Arab Muslims rank highest – by a significant margin – in their support for Al Qaeda:

Palestinian Arab support for Hezbollah is also the highest, along with Lebanese Muslims. (If you factor in Christians, clearly the Palestinian Arab numbers would be even higher than Lebanese.)

Even the Taliban get more support from Palestinian Arabs than any other Muslim group!

These results have been consistent for years. But they make no dent in the brains of enlightened Westerners who really, truly believe that Palestinian Arabs are moderate, that they want peace, and that they do not support terror.

Mere facts and figures cannot displace the enormous amount of emotional investment in the false religion of the “peace process” – which necessarily requires a belief in the fairy tale that the Palestinian Arab side loves peace.

The truth cannot be discarded when it is inconvenient, but that has been exactly the attitude of the West regarding Palestinian Arabs for some forty years now.

Twenty years ago today, Israel’s so-called peace process with the PLO was officially ushered in at the White House Rose Garden.

Twenty years ago today, Israel’s so-called peace process with the PLO was officially ushered in at the White House Rose Garden.

A year or so later, when the death toll of Israeli victims of the massive terror offensive that the PLO organized shortly afterwards reached what then seemed unbearable heights, a popular call went out to “Put the Oslo Criminals on Trial.”

Needless to say, with Shimon Peres, the architect and godfather of the so-called peace process now serving as the president of Israel, nothing ever came of the call.

The demand for an accounting was not unprecedented. There was no reason, on the face of things, for those who made it to be perceived as anything other than reasonably enraged, and as responsible citizens insisting that those responsible for the largest, most destructive strategic error Israel has ever made pay a personal price for their actions.

Twenty years before that ceremony at the White House, Israel suffered the worst military defeat in its history.

Israel did win the Yom Kippur War, in the end.

It was a sloppy, painful, tragic and costly win.

Victory owed to tactical errors by the Syrians; to the unbelievable heroism, and dogged determination, exhibited by the IDF’s junior officer corps and line soldiers, particularly on the Golan Heights; and to the emergency resupply of war materiel Israel received midway through the war from the United States.

Just as was the case 20 years later, when Israelis (having been introduced to the suicide bomber), decided their leaders had betrayed them – following the Yom Kippur War, the demobilized soldiers, the bereaved families and the general public demanded an accounting from the senior political leaders and the IDF brass that had led them down the vicious, deadly garden path.

After the Yom Kippur War, their demand was answered. The Agranat Commission was formed. And heads rolled. The prime minister, defense minister and IDF chief of staff were all booted out. Other senior IDF commanders were relieved of their duties. And they deserved what they got.

And just to make sure we remember how ill-served we were by our leaders 40 years ago, every year around Yom Kippur, the media gives an open mike to every maudlin, angry and indignant story they can find. Every year documentaries are produced. Every year, books are published. And for the most part, they are interesting and worthwhile.

Nothing even vaguely resembling the now 40-year-long accounting Israel has experienced with regard to the Yom Kippur War has occurred in relation to the so-called peace process with the Palestinians that is now 20 years old. No commission of inquiry was convened.

No heads have rolled.

No television station has broadcast a serious documentary explaining the price Israel has paid on any level for a mistake that has cost us so dearly on every level. No one has given belated tribute to the millions of Israelis who foresaw the disaster that would befall us if we recognized the PLO.

And foresee it they did. And oppose it, they did. More than two million Israelis – or nearly half the country’s Jewish population in the early 1990s, and a third of the current Jewish population, have actively opposed the so-called Oslo Accords and what followed.

As a proportion of Israel’s population, the number of Israelis who took part in protests against the so-called peace process comprised the largest protest movement in history.

The public foresaw what was eminently foreseeable.

Renowned intellectuals and decorated military leaders warned that the PLO was a terrorist organization that had no intention of making peace with Israel. They warned that the PLO would use every inch of land Israel transferred to its control as a forward base for terrorism against Israeli civilians. They warned that Yasser Arafat was a liar, a murderer and a Jewhater who would use all powers granted him to murder and legitimize the murder of Israeli civilians.

They warned that he was not interested in the least in establishing a Palestinian state, rather wanted only to oversee the dismemberment and destruction of our state, the Jewish state.

And for the past 20 years, their warnings were borne out by events every single day.

More than 1,500 Israelis have been murdered by Palestinian terrorists in the past 20 years.

Scores of thousands of Israelis have been wounded or suffered the destruction of their families and their lives.

Diplomatically, Israel has paid an immeasurable price for the abject stupidity of our leaders’ willful blindness to the rank phoniness of the PLO’s commitment to peaceful coexistence with Israel. The glaring obviousness of the danger of accepting the false historical narrative of our sworn enemies for our ability to defend ourselves internationally was so overwhelming that no one even bothered to mention it in the years before the so-called Oslo Accord was concluded.

But today, after 20 years of self-induced diplomatic failure have rendered Israeli leaders and representatives incapable of defending the country, it is necessary to explain it.

The PLO falsely claims that the cause for instability and violence in the Middle East is the absence of a Palestinian state in the lands Israel took control over from Jordan and Egypt in the 1967 Six Day War.

Before the inauguration of the so-called peace process, Israel easily defended itself against this libel. After all, the PLO was established in 1964 – three years before Israel took control over Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Its declared purpose was and remains the destruction of Israel, not the establishment of a Palestinian state on some of the territory Israel controls.

The absence of regional peace has nothing at all to do with Israel. It stems from the virulent Jew-hatred that is endemic throughout the Islamic world. Due to this hatred, Israel’s neighbors seek its destruction. The centrality of their irrational, obsessive desire to seek the eradication of the Jewish people and the Jewish state is the reason there has been no true peace between Israel and its neighbors – including its Palestinian neighbors. And because their hatred is irrational and all-encompassing, there is nothing Israel can do to appease them.

Israel was able to defend itself from the PLO’s lies to great effect before it accepted this terrorist organization as a legitimate actor and so accepted the legitimacy of its duplicitous narrative.

But since it did, it has been unable to explain its actions, or increasingly, its right to exist at all. Because if the absence of a Palestinian state in Israel’s heartland, and in its capital city, is what stands behind all the bad behavior of the Arab world, then everything that Israel does that impinges even marginally on the establishment of such of state is immoral, destabilizing and dangerous.

This is why even Israel’s most skilled diplomats – to the extent they still operate in Israel’s PLO-besotted Foreign Ministry – cannot defend us.

This is why a generation of Israeli leaders have zero to show for their efforts to defend this country. They are trapped in a policy discourse that is founded on anti-Israel lies.

Then there is our alliance with the United States. To legitimize the single-most destructive action ever undertaken by an Israeli government, the Rabin-Peres government approached the Clinton administration and asked it to sponsor this objectively insane policy, strenuously opposed by half the country.

Bill Clinton was happy to oblige them. But once the Americans were on board, and placed US prestige behind a policy which, based as it was on lies, had no chance of success, Israel could not walk away.

Once the Americans supported a policy that half of the public – and now two-thirds of the public – opposed, Washington necessarily found itself siding with an ever-shrinking minority of Israelis against the majority of the public. Consequently, for the past 20 years, US decision-makers have backed policies that have become progressively more anti-Israel.

From a domestic perspective, the phony peace process has taken an enormous toll on Israeli society and democracy. To defend such a move so strenuously and reasonably opposed by such a large portion of the public it was necessary to marginalize the public. And so we were subjected to a systematic effort to purge and discredit dissident voices from the senior and later junior ranks of the IDF, the Foreign Ministry, (although Peres had done much of the work pruning responsible voices out of the ministry in the previous decade), and the Justice Ministry.

Responsible opponents in the public square were castigated as extremists and enemies of peace, little different from terrorists. A new vocabulary to hide reality – such as calling terror victims, victims of peace – was invented.

Four times in the past 20 years – in 1994, 1995, 2000 and 2005 – the peace processors brought Israeli society to the brink of collapse.

Lawful demonstrators and political activists – including minor children – were criminalized, and often jailed and put on trial for their civil disobedience. The corruption of Israel’s legal system, which applies laws unequally to various members of the public, depending on their political views, was a direct outcome of Israel’s decision 20 years ago to embrace the PLO.

For the past 20 years, the party most responsible for Israel’s continued abidance by a strategy that has brought us nothing but disaster is the media. The reason that Peres was elected to the presidency rather than put out to pasture like Golda Meir is because the media lionized him as the greatest statesman of all time.

The reason that once in office non-leftist leaders embrace the positions of the radical Left, ignore the public, block every attempt to correct the damage that the Oslo Accords have wrought, and embark on a new path, is that they are no match for Channel 2 and all the rest.

Our media outlets run a constant stream of post-Zionist propaganda that has reduced our elected representatives’ field of action to the size of a postage stamp. They ignore knowledgeable, well-spoken representatives of the majority. They regularly invite cognitively and aesthetically challenged nationalists to their studios to embarrass into silence the majority of viewers who share their opinions. Zionists are hired to high-profile but powerless positions to make the public feel uncomfortable about complaining that its views have no voice in the media.

Today the Obama administration plumbs the depths of strategic dysfunction. The Arab world empowers the most dangerous elements in country after country. The European Union treats Israel as a greater international outlaw than Iran, North Korea or Syria. Anti-Israel indoctrination is the norm on university campuses throughout the Western world. A generation is coming of age that has never heard the truth about the Jewish state.

To contend with all this, the single-most important step Israel must take is to end our 20- year nightmare with the PLO. As long as it continues, we will remain incapable of defending ourselves.

Barak and Olmert offered the Palestinians a state, something no Arab or Islamic country ever did.

Israel offered the Palestinians a state, even though there was never in history any state called Palestine governed by Palestinians.

The Palestinians’ plight is due to their own fanaticism, hatred, intolerance and intransigence.

The reason the Palestinians do not accept any peace offers, no matter how generous as Barak and Olmert tried to do.

The Palestinian fascists need to see the Israelis suffering (either through physical annihilation or demographic submission) in order to feel good with themselves. Any win-win solution to the conflict cannot satisfy them, because it would leave the Israelis happy too, and the Palestinians are not interested in becoming happy.
They want to make the Jews suffer.

Just look how many streets the Palestinian Arabs have named for terrorists﻿ who murdered Israeli civilians.
The Palestinians have run out of streets and are now naming park benches after terrorists!

These are the racists that Shlaim supports.

Shlaim wont say one word about the hardline Holocaust Denying, Munich massacre financing Abbas goverment that glorifies terrorism against Israeli civilians and names streets after homicide bombers and talks how how will be annihilated.
All you have to do Pam is go on Palmediawatch which documents all of this.

A disgusting and quite hateful attempt to equate calls for a Palestinian state with the genocide of the Nazis. Is this all you have? Really pathetic and quite satisfying for us moderates that you have to manufacture your bullshit out of nothing at all.

So, Jasshole, when does this become too much for you that you have to kill yourself?

And speaking of existentialism, when you do die, do you think there will not be an Israel? Do you think that those 8 million citizens will have simpled packed up their bags and have moved away? Do you think that you’re gong to win this debate by posting drivel and hate mongering bullshit while labeling yourself as a straight thinking moderate?

The only person you are fooling is yourself. And in case you haven’t figured out, your self isn’t worth shit.

That actually move Now they will talk about you. Pay attention and keep asking questions about all the options available to you.
Some patients will select a PPO because they must have the freedom to see their
choice of doctors. There had to be Tasered.
No one ever recognizes me. The test measures the levels dr.